


How Things Change

by ungoodpirate



Series: Belated Pynch Week 2017 [6]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Day 6, Elements, M/M, Pynch Week, Pynch Week 2017, Ronan typical language, one of those Ronan visits Adam at college stories, pynch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 13:04:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11875104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungoodpirate/pseuds/ungoodpirate
Summary: “You’re taller,” Adam said, sudden and surprised.“New shoes,” Ronan replied. Adam glanced quickly at his feet. Yeah, boots would do that.“You’re the same height then.”Ronan raised an eyebrow. “Did you think I would change in a month?”It had felt longer than a month. New things often did, until they fell into mundane routine. Every day felt new here, and appreciated. It was something Adam had worked on for so long.---AKA Ronan visits Adam at college, there is some kissing, some arguing, some communication, and some sex puns about the Periodic Table of Elements.





	How Things Change

“And this is the chem lab where I spend half my life,” Adam said, pushing open the door to an expansive laboratory classroom.

“They just leave this place unlocked?” Ronan asked, looking over Adam’s shoulder. He had followed Adam around on this tour attentively, always half a step behind.

“Only if you’re in the class or a major,” Adam said, holding up his student id, which had also served as a sensor that unlocked his door building and a few of the classrooms. “They want us to actually be able to do our homework.” 

“Seems risky to give access to chemicals to a bunch of partying college students.”

“Yale isn’t exactly a party school,” Adam said. 

“Then what’s exactly the point?” 

Adam turned on his boyfriend, but had known from his tone, knew even more from his smirk, that Ronan was teasing. 

Ronan had arrived on campus a little over an hour ago. It had been a little over a month since they’d seen each other, a little over a month of Adam into his freshman year at Yale. Adam had been so excited to show him everything, he hadn’t taken a proper moment to look. 

“You’re taller,” Adam said, sudden and surprised. 

“New shoes,” Ronan replied. Adam glanced quickly at his feet. Yeah, boots would do that. 

“You’re the same height then.”

Ronan raised an eyebrow. “Did you think I would change in a month?” 

It had felt longer than a month. New things often did, until they fell into mundane routine. Every day felt new here, and appreciated. It was something Adam had worked on for so long. 

Ronan shuffled around the space of the lab. He looked out of place amongst it. Not because of his leather jacket or his shaved head or the hooks of his tattoo peaking up above his collar. College, even a prestige one like Yale, had its strange assortment of people. No, it was the way his shoulders were raised like hackles, the way his feet were shuffling, heavy and unsure. It was the way Ronan had looked every day at Aglionby. Adam had just forgotten. Had forgotten this anxious, defensive creature after months of seeing him truly and gloriously free at the Barns. 

Ronan huffed and pointed a computer page printed out and scotch taped by the wall near the door.

‘Science majors do it on the periodic table of elements.’

Something seized in Adam’s chest, an overwhelming tightening that felt awful close to tears, seeing a glimpse of Ronan’s uninhibited smile. 

Adam brushed past Ronan to close the door, then seized Ronan by the neck to kiss him. 

“I didn’t mean to give you ideas, Parrish.” 

Adam shushed him, and kissed him deeper, a thirsty kiss, a thing he had been parched for. 

Ronan hands -- warm and familiar -- gripped Adam’s arm and side. Warmth, taste, and smell -- leather and sweat -- and he was surrounded by Ronan by all senses. 

“I missed you,” Adam said against his lips, only as far as he could make himself go to draw in an uneven breath. 

Ronan shifted, bumping their noses together. “Yeah?” 

Adam leaned farther back, brow furrowed. The sterile air of the room moved between them. “Is that a question?” 

Ronan stepped back. “Let’s get something to eat.” 

#

The cafeteria had lost all its excitement. The polished tables, the mediocre food, the meals that were paid with a swipe of his id card that were in turn paid with his generous scholarship that had included boarding and food fees all turned to boring trivia that Adam couldn’t bring himself to elaborate on. 

Alyssa, his lab partner, waved to Adam as she walked past with a group of friends. Adam raised a hand weakly in return. Ronan chewed the end of the straw sticking out of his drink into a mess of plastic. 

Ronan was only going to be here a little less than 24 hours. Eight or so would be spent sleeping or trying to sleep. There wasn’t time to waste, and they ended the summer more mature than this. 

“What’s wrong?” Adam said. 

Ronan dropped the straw from his teeth and instead twisted the leather bands on his wrist. 

Just as Adam thought he would have to say it again, with a ‘with you’ attached, Ronan said, “Does it feel like feel like home yet?” 

“To be honest, I don’t know exactly what home feels like.”

Ronan made a guttural grunt. “But you’re happy here.”

“Yes,” Adam said quick and vehement. “This is everything I worked my ass off for for five years.” Mountain View to Aglionby, Aglionby to Yale, Yale to the future. “Are you saying I shouldn’t be happy?”

“I didn’t fucking say that,” Ronan shot back. 

Adam dug a thumb into his temple, lowered his voice and said, “Are we seriously fighting right now?”

Ronan stood up from the table. “I’m done.”

“What?” Adam snapped, heart catching in his chest. 

“Eating,” Ronan said. “I’m done eating. Can we go?” There was something cagey and strange to him, and Adam just might get around to using ‘What’s wrong with you?’ yet. 

#

The sun was dipping behind the buildings, the almost part of a sunset. They trudged around campus not really talking, not really doing anything. Adam really didn’t think it was a good idea to try to cage Ronan inside right now, not in any of the prestigious places that looked too much like Aglionby, like his old cage, not in his dorm where Adam’s roommate probably was. 

On a lawn nearby, a group of students were running around in a pickup game of football. 

“Hey, Adam!” someone called, and Adam paid attention soon enough to seen a football be lobbed in his direction. He caught it with a fumble. 

“Want to join in?” the thrower called. 

Adam tossed the ball back. “Not right now,” he called back. 

“Who was that?” Ronan asked once they had passed them by. 

“Just my RA,” Adam said. “He’s always trying to get people involved in socializing.” 

They walked on. 

“You really fit in here,” Ronan said. 

“Yeah,” Adam said, although the confirmation felt like he had just inched out onto a patch of driftwood that underneath might hide a pit. 

“I don’t,” Ronan said. 

He didn’t. Adam said, “You don’t have to.” 

“But you do.”

Adam felt dizzy. 

He stopped. Ronan stopped two steps later. They were alone on a sidewalk, on one side one tall, historic, academic building, and on the other another tall, historic, academic building. While Adam never felt at place at Aglionby, he didn’t feel like an impostor here. 

Ronan was a smudge on the edge of the camera lens. 

“Are you breaking up with me?” Adam asked. 

“What?”

“Because that’s what this sounds like.” Adam had been dumped before. The distance and the edging, they were both familiar. 

“No. Fuck no. Adam --” Ronan took a step forward. 

He ran a hand over the short buzz of his hair. He must’ve shaved it just before he come on this trip. He was clean-shaven too. The shoes, Adam remembered, were new. 

Ronan struggled with words, so Adam tried to give him room. 

“It just… feels like this is harder for me than it is for you,” Ronan said. 

Fit in. Happy. Home. All Ronan’s questions started to make sense.

“I miss you,” Ronan said. 

“I miss you too. I said that.” 

“I know, but…” Ronan took a deep breath and then spilled everything out as fast as he could, “Every time we talk, it’s always about how great this place is… and I want you do be happy, Adam, I do, but…”

Adam stepped forward and grabbed Ronan’s jacket by the lapels. “It’s because when something good happens, the first person I want to tell is you… You don’t think a month was enough to change that, right?” 

Ronan removed one of Adam’s hands from his jacket and interlaced thier fingers. 

“Can we go somewhere private?” 

“I’ll kick out my roommate.”

Adam’s roommate was gone when they went to his dorm, so Adam pressed Ronan down onto his bed and expressed every minutes of repressed wanting, every second of moments missed, against his mouth and neck and skin.

#

“I’d dream about waking up next to you and wouldn’t be there,” Adam said. The weight and warmth of Ronan now, lain behind him on the bed, arm crooked around his middle, could just be another phantom.

“Me too,” Ronan said. “For the first week, every time Opal did something weird, I’d call out your name for you to come see it before I remembered…”

“Every time I heard a joke I thought you’d like, I look over for your a reaction. You’re in my muscle memory, Lynch.”

He feel Ronan’s breath across his ear. 

“I love everything about this place,” Adam admitted, “Except for all the important people who aren’t here with me.” He meant Ronan, of course, and also Gansey, Blue, and Henry. He meant painful Persephone and Noah. He meant the other Fox Way woman who had squirmed their way into his found family. He meant Opal. 

“When I think too hard about it,” Adam said. “I want to cry.” 

“Homesickness,” Ronan said. 

Adam said, “Oh.” Because had always thought of ‘home’ in terms of a real house he never had, a warmth of family, a nostalgic view of a hometown. But people? Yeah, he was definitely sick with missing certain people. 

“I want you to keep telling me about all the good things that happen to you,” Ronan said. “Every single, goddamn one.” 

#

A week later, well after Ronan was gone, well after the missing him went deep again, Adam received a package in the mail. It was a box haphazard crisscrossed with duct tape to keep it shut, with no return address, but no doubt who it was from. 

With a set of scissors, Adam tore it open. He laughed upon seeing the contents. Of course, of all the things Ronan had seen had at Yale, this was what stuck in his memory. 

Inside was a fleece blanket when unfolded revealed it had the Periodic Table of Elements printed on it, and a single sentence note: ‘For next time.’

**Author's Note:**

> In my head, my three 'canon compliant' fics in my pynch week "Sometimes you get me," "Constellations", and this are all connected. 
> 
> You can find me at ungoodgatsby.tumblr.com


End file.
